Is Microsoft About to Change Its Tune on Indie Development?

Just one week after reversing its DRM policy for the Xbox One, Microsoft appears to be rethinking its attitude towards independent developers.

Currently, developers must go through a small group of approved publishers if they want to get their games onto Xbox 360’s Live Arcade download service, a policy Microsoft said it is not changing for Xbox One. Rivals Sony and Nintendo, not to mention other platforms like iOS and Android, let developers publish their own games. This can give developers more revenue, as well as more creative freedom.

However, it seems as if Build, a Microsoft developers conference coming to San Francisco this week, may bring with it a change to that strict policy.

“Some people seem to think Microsoft will announce some self-publishing/indie Xbox One stuff this week at their Build Developer Conference,” a Kotaku columnist named Superannuation reported on Twitter on Sunday. Minecraft developer Notch seems to know something, too.

It’s not much of a stretch to say Microsoft has something of a bad rep among indie developers, even those who’ve had big Xbox Live Arcade hits.

“Microsoft treats independent developers very badly,” developer Jonathan Blow told Wired in April. Blow’s first game, Braid, debuted on Xbox Live Arcade, but his sophomore effort The Witness will debut on PlayStation 4. Blow was even invited to show it off on stage when Sony unveiled the new console.

Phil Fish, whose game Fez also debuted to critical acclaim on Xbox 360, recently told Polygon his next game may not appear on Xbox platforms at all. “[Microsoft has] made it painfully clear they don’t want my ilk on their platform,” he said. “I can’t even self-publish there. Whereas on PS4, I can. It’s that simple.”

Eventually, developers like Halfbrick, which created little-known games like Echoes and Rocket Racing for Xbox Live Indie Games, abandoned the platform and moved to iPhone, producing hits like Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride.

The Xbox 360’s game ecosystem is bifurcated, and neither option is especially palatable for these developers.

If you want to publish your game on Xbox 360, you have two choices. You could go through a publisher, signing your rights away and giving someone else control over your creative product. And that all presupposes that you can find a publisher willing to work with you. Or you could put your game on the Indie Games channel, a Wild West dominated by Minecraft clones where it is exceedingly likely that your game will disappear and you will make very little, if any, money.

Apple’s solution is to throw everyone into the same pool, and attempt to get the best products to surface to the top of its iTunes store.

Sony and Nintendo attempt to walk down the middle. Developers aren’t allowed unfettered access to the download store, but Sony and Nintendo evaluate projects individually and give developers their blessing to publish games on Wii U and PlayStation 3 if they like what they see.

In particular, Sony’s outreach to independent developers has brought games like Journey, which won this year’s DICE Award for Game of the Year, to PlayStation platforms. At its E3 show, it invited a whole parade of small developers to show off their PlayStation 4 projects.

If Microsoft wants the same level of participation from developers like Jonathan Blow and Phil Fish on Xbox One, it seems like it must adopt a similar policy. If the rumors are true, that’s just a few days away.